


And You’re Standing in the Silence, Standing in the Darkness, Singing About Wishing

by biancababy



Series: Dina is Sad and So Am I [1]
Category: The Band's Visit - Yazbek/Moses
Genre: Dina and Papi are sad, Free Verse, Friendship, Lonliness, Other, Sadness, There’s some Papi/Haled if you squint, You don’t have to squint very hard though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-01-13 16:23:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18472630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biancababy/pseuds/biancababy
Summary: Dina and Papi deal with the wreckage caused by the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra.





	And You’re Standing in the Silence, Standing in the Darkness, Singing About Wishing

The band leaves  
and takes with it  
a piece of Dina’s heart 

(she didn’t know there was any left to take).

The band leaves  
and takes with it  
a piece of Papi’s joy 

(he feels empty inside).

It was addicting  
that feeling of  
_something_.

Now it is gone.

During the day, they pretend like everything is normal and boring like it was.

Dina is her normal self,  
bitingly sarcastic  
yet warm  
and lively.  
Papi is as he was:  
playing off of Dina,  
joking without malice  
and just a little clumsy.

During the day,  
they pretend  
but 

Every night for a whole week  
the two climb up to Dina’s apartment after work.

They sit  
and drink cheap wine  
and try to sort through the numbness.  
That’s all they can feel.

Numb.  
Maybe sadness.

(definitely sadness in Papi’s case)  
(Dina isn’t sure)

They take up residence on Dina’s old, old couch— Dina on the left side, feet tucked up under her, and Papi on the right, wrapped in her childhood quilt.

The first night they don’t talk at all.  
Dina walks up and Papi follows her.

She says nothing.  
She knows.  
She knows that he needs her and that maybe she needs him.

(Really,  
they were the only two affected in this way.  
Itzik and Arvum, too,  
she supposes,  
and maybe Tzachi

(though she has a hunch that he couldn’t care less because his girlfriend called)

but she knows that  
Itzik and Iris have thrown themselves into repairing their marriage and  
Arvum is facilitating that. 

Dina  
has nothing to throw herself into  
and Papi  
no longer has Julia to occupy his thoughts)

Anyway  
they need each other.

They sit  
and think  
and sip their wine  
in silence.

Papi thinks that this is ridiculous.  
It was such a small event:  
a band got lost  
and stayed with them  
for the night.

Why does he feel like the absence of another young man’s soft laugh is burning a hole in his heart?

The second night they get takeout and speak all of four words to each other.

falafel  
she asks.

sure  
he shrugs.

thank you  
he says later.

sure  
she murmurs.

The third night they watch an old Omar Sharif movie  
Papi flips through her five channels and finds it

the only thing that wasn’t news  
he says  
looking at the television.

her shoulders tense.  
he doesn’t see.

fine  
she says.

the muted noise of the television is better than silence.

(halfway through Dina’s eyes begin to mist up  
(because it’s late and she’s tired, she tells herself)  
(she’s lying)  
Papi notices and pretends he doesn’t)

The fourth night they finally run out of wine.  
Dina has to go get some more.

get the white  
he says.

that is a garbage wine  
she says

(she gets the white).

The fifth night Dina hums My Funny Valentine absentmindedly

(she had lied, she did enjoy Chet Baker very much).

Papi cries

(it hurts and he misses Haled so much and fuck why did they even come here).

Dina wordlessly gets up and comes back with a box of tissues and a plastic grocery bag that she sets in front of him.  
She does not protest when he moves and rests his head on her shoulder

(never mind the fact that he’s getting her shoulder all wet and probably snotting on her quilt)

He needs her  
so she will be there  
as sobs rack his body and he draws in uneven breaths.

Eventually Dina realizes that he has cried himself to sleep.  
She can’t bring herself to wake him.  
She falls asleep there, and doesn’t wake up when Papi rises and slips out at two a.m.

He drapes the quilt over her before he leaves.

The sixth night they are silent until Papi scoots closer and lays his head in her lap. Her fingers automatically comb through his hair, they way they did when he was a small boy and she was still young and stupid and engaged.

(she is none of those things now  
except stupid  
for letting herself  
feel something besides apathy  
again)

why, dina  
he whispers.  
why did they have to come

i don’t know  
dina says.

they got lost  
and they needed a place to stay  
and since we’re nice people  
we gave them one

but why does it hurt  
he asks.

i want to be happy again  
i want to see him

She thinks for a while.

because  
she answers.

what could have been is not what is  
they are not coming back  
and we will never meet again  
and the thought is painful

Dina’s own words hit her harder than she’d care to admit.  
They’re ridiculous words  
overdramatic and sounding like bad poetry  
but they’re the best ones she can find.  
And they hit her like the music once did

(the music of a man whom she wants desperately to come back).

The seventh night they pretend everything is normal because it’s time they got on with their lives.  
They make normal conversation and  
do not  
discuss the band.

Dina does not talk  
does not talk about how she can hardly think of Tewfiq without sending herself into sobs.

(She mostly doesn’t tell him because she wants to be strong for the closest thing she ever had to a child)  
(and because she can barely admit to herself that she cries over someone who was only in her life for thirteen hours)

Papi does not say  
does not say how he feels the life has been drained from his body and has not returned since Haled smiled at him for the last time.

(he’s been sitting on his balcony after he gets home from Dina’s apartment so Zelger and Anna can’t hear him sniffle)  
(he no longer hears the sea when he sees Julia, though he thinks he might if Haled ever came back, which Papi knows he won’t)

On the eighth night, Dina drinks alone.  
Papi goes home and straight to bed and doesn’t get up until morning.

They know it’s time  
to at least pretend that they are fine.

Dina is still missing a piece of her heart.  
Papi is still without joy.  
But they can do nothing about it.  
They hurt.  
But life must continue  
so  
they go on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! The fact that this is in free verse is inspired by allonsytotumblr . Basically I realized that there’s no way that Dina and Papi weren’t complete wrecks inside after the events of TBV, so I decided to write that story.


End file.
